The Art of Fiction Writing or How To Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying

THE ART OF FICTION WRITING

or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole

Without Really Trying

Emily Hanlon

Copyright 2011 by Emily Hanlon

Smashwords Edition

This book is also available in a print addition

Cover graphic by Katherine Streeter

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thanks

Also by Emily Hanlon

Petersburg, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Love Is No Excuse, Bradbury Press

The Wing and the Flame, Bradbury Press

Circle Home, Bradbury Press

The Swing, Bradbury Press

It’s Too Late for Sorry, Bradbury Press

How a Horse Grew Hoarse on the Site Where He Sighted a Bare Bear, Delacorte Press

What If A Lion Eats Me and I Fall into a Hippopotamus’ Mud Hole?, Delacorte Press

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

books by emily

Introduction: Why the Rabbit Hole?

Chapter 1: Identifying the Inner Critic

Chapter 2: Defanging the Inner Critic

Chapter 3: Risk, Passion and Creativity

Chapter 4: The Gypsy Dances

Chapter 5: A Room of One’s Own

Chapter 6: In Search of the Vampire Within

Chapter 7: The Darkside

Chapter 8: The Skeleton in Your Closet: Embracing Your Darkside

Chapter 9: The Light of the Dark

Chapter 10: The Labyrinth Beckons

Chapter 11: The Destroyer

Chapter 12: Turning Fact into Fiction

Chapter 13: Childhood

Chapter 14: Eros

Chapter 15: The Interview

Chapter 16: The Happy Ending: Love Conquers All

Ten Tips on Writing and Creativity

About the Author

Bibliography

* * *

INTRODUCTION: WHY THE RABBIT HOLE?

Imagine this book as part of a journey, one which began long ago and will continue long after you close the pages for the last time. Imagine, too, that you and I are working together as teacher and student, but the relationship is unlike many teacher/student relations. There are no tests and there is only one way you can fail or make a mistake: if you lose heart, say I can’t or I won’t, if you refuse to risk. It is important, however, to remember that you are never alone on this journey. For a while, I will be your guide, and as we travel together, new guides will appear from your creative unconscious in the form of your Inner Writer and strange and wonderful characters. It will be the trip of a lifetime!

As we begin, imagine we are sitting together on the dark rust-colored velvet couch in my living room. There are plants all around and a white cat by the name of Al, who sits on the back of the couch or, preferably, on whatever papers you put down while we talk. Jilly Bear, my Maine Coon cat, is lying luxuriously on the glass coffee table in front of us. Behind us is a print of a painting called The Bear Dance, in which countless brown and white bears cavort in the woods. Opposite us is a fireplace. Above the mantle is a painting of a sea-blue dragon poised atop a cliff and on the mantle are rocks I’ve gathered from the Maine coast, candles, an eagle claw attached to a deer bone from which dangle feathers, a piece of apple wood from my apple tree that was carved by my son into a face, a statue of an African god of creativity, a small ivory dragon and a collection of turtles started by one of my students to remind us that the creative process is slow and we have to stick out our necks to get anyplace.

This room where I have been meeting with writers and teaching for years is on a mountain overlooking a reservoir; the air is soft yet resonant with the creative forces unleashed here, the struggles and the triumphs of writers no different from you who have taken the journey into the creative unconscious and opened to the passion of their characters and stories. A rare few have fallen thoughtlessly down the Rabbit Hole; the overwhelming number have approached with hesitation if not outright fear. For what happens when Alice tumbles into Wonderland? Nothing is as it seems: Big is little, little big, cats talk and she meets strange, frightening and alluring characters.

Wonderland as Metaphor

Falling down the Rabbit Hole into Wonderland is a perfect metaphor for the creative journey which can never take place in the real or conscious world. Writing, whether it be fiction, poetry or nonfiction, finds its origins in the dark, fertile chaos of the unconscious. If you don’t meet Cheshire cats and Mad Hatters, Tweedledees and Tweedledums, mad queens, dragons, flying monkeys and monsters, or your version of the above, then you have not fallen. This is not to say you have to be writing fantasy or horror to open to your unconscious, but as you will see, the journey for the writer must hold metaphorically a good sprinkling of both.

The Journey

There are at least two journeys for every book, the writer’s and the reader’s. First, the journey must work for you. It is important not to see this journey as simply a means to an end—the finished story. The journey is an end in itself, and that’s what this book is about: the journey inward.

The Dance

Creativity is a complex dance between the inner and outer worlds, between the intuitive and the rational, the unknown and the known, the feminine and masculine energies.You cannot be a successful creator without dancing this dance with a certain finesse, and to do that, you must be comfortable in both worlds. However, first comes the inner journey into the unknown or, in the vernacular of this book, you must fall down the rabbit hole. Then your writing, no matter how realistic or fantastical, will vibrate with the passion, risk and joy of your travels through Wonderland.

If this scares you a bit, if you think, all I want to do is write a nice story, beware! The writer within you is gagging at the thought. The writer within knows the dark regions of Wonderland intimately and brought you there often when you were a child; it was in growing up that you lost sight of the magic entryway. But now that the memory rises up, no matter how shadowy, the Inner Writer thrills to the anticipated excitement and can hardly wait to return. The Inner Writer knows there is absolutely nothing to fear in the unconscious. It is your Inner Critic who balks—you know who I mean: that voice inside your head that jabbers away incessantly, commenting, criticizing, sometimes judging others but mostly judging you. In fact, it was your Inner Critic who told you it was Time to grow up and put the foolishness of Wonderland away! To keep you from returning and making a fool out of yourself, or worse, giving up adult responsibility, the Inner Critic has probably set some pretty powerful monsters by the path back to the Rabbit Hole.

Does this sound silly to you? If so, you’re listening to your Inner Critic. Have a pen and paper handy, then take a moment and close your eyes. See if you can tune in to the voice and desires of your Inner Writer instead. Ask your Inner Writer, What do you think about returning to Wonderland? Then listen. After a while, no matter if you haven’t heard anything positive, start to write. Do not think or judge.

If you have written by now and couldn’t hear your Inner Writer or if you had trouble letting her response flow, don’t worry. Your Inner Writer may have been silent for so long her voice is too soft to hear above the racket of the Inner Critic. This will change, for our first step toward the Rabbit Hole is learning how to quiet the Inner Critic. In the meantime, you need only to consider this: If you write from your conscious mind, your Inner Critic can easily take control and you become limited by what you know and have experienced. The material of the unconscious is, on the other hand, cosmic.

Purpose of This Book

The processes and exercises in this workbook are designed to get you out of your conscious mind and the tyrannical hold of your Inner Critic, and allow you to fall down the Rabbit Hole into the realms of the creative unconscious—deeper than you have ever gone before. One of my students put it this way:

When I reflect on where I started and where I am now, I know that the journey I have taken through my writing is the most valuable experience of my adult life. I went into this place where I dared to peel away all or most of my defenses, a little at a time, until what is left is the core of what makes me me. It is alive, it throbs with passion and anger, it can feel sorrow and elation; it lives and breathes because it is me.

I invite you to take this amazing journey into the Wonderland of your creative unconscious. Have a journal handy so that you can write the answers to the questions and prompts as you come to them. Write without thinking. Don’t question what you write. Don’t judge it or qualify it. Just write….

Now it is time to take the first journey on the audio that comes along with this e-book. Each journey is different in style and content. This first one, Journey to the Rabbit Hole, takes at least thirty minutes, so be sure you listen when you not only have the time, but also when you won’t be disturbed. And please be patient. I have found that once I click on the link, it takes a few moments for the audio to load.

Tip 1: Don’t think. Creating a story or book has little to do with language or the intellect when we first begin. Our best ideas will emerge as a spark or image. Like dreams, they will make little sense. Followed, they will hold the key to the creative unconscious.

"Writing is the axe that breaks the frozen sea within us."

Franz Kafka

* * * *

CHAPTER 1: IDENTIFYING THE INNER CRITIC

Who is your Inner Critic? Am I asking you to become a multiple personality? First there’s the Inner Writer, then the Inner Critic. Who else do I think is living inside you? Who else indeed! The fact is, we all have many voices inside us and many faces that we show to the world. The unknown characters who are going to emerge by the time you have finished this book are different internal voices, some buried so deeply inside you have no idea they’re there. And the voice who buried them, the commandant of your intellect and conscious self or ego, the one who stands by the door of your creative unconscious, sometimes barring the way with an automatic weapon, is none other than the Inner Critic.

Let’s look at ways the Inner Critic blocks and confounds your writing. He may insist you produce an outline before you begin to write. Or he may insist you write only from your own life because, How can you write about what you don’t know? Or he might have you spending hours trying to find the right word, or shifting around sentences until you find yourself in a quagmire of grammar, thesaurus page-turning and general frustration.

You know the Inner Critic is at work when you look at the clock and discover you’ve spent an hour on a single paragraph, worse a single sentence, and the computer screen is mostly blank or the page is so scribbled on and crossed out and torn from erasing, you can’t read it anyway. That’s the moment when you throw up your hands or crumble your page into a ball or press the delete button thinking, Who am I to think I can write? I can’t even find the right word. I’d do better going to Adult Ed and taking a grammar course. God, I’m stupid!

The good news is that’s not all of you talking; but it is a loud part of you. After being with you most of your life, you’d better